Chapter 14: Of Pain and Peach Fuzz: A Chief Equity Officer Rants

I remember how my father almost cried when my brother and I finally started getting noticeable hair on our faces. He made us shave our mustaches off. “Fellas, I do not want them thinking you are older than you are. I do not want them rushing you to manhood.” He would always say partly in earnest and in part jest, “There’s not much I can do about them treating you like a boy when you become a man, or them treating you like you are a man when you are a boy. But I can make you jive turkeys keep that peach fuzz off your faces for a little longer.” My father was big, brilliant, and bold. If there was a fight that needed to happen, he would oblige. Be it via activism, debate, or a brawl, my father would engage if left with no choice. It was his hope that by shaving his sons’ faces, the world might just see our faces for what they were: black, smooth, and young. It was his way of trying to keep us from the inevitable fight as long as possible. The internal and external fight/war that fathers and mothers cannot keep from entering their home when raising Black boys is what he was trying prevent. It was not the check-to-check financial station that we lived in that worried my father. It was that station that he knew the world would put me in soon enough that unnerved him.